Reversible knife-pleated garments have been manufactured and marketed for many years. The basic skirt construction is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,791,779, issued May 14, 1957, and in U.S. Pat. No. 2,898,601, issued Aug. 11, 1959.
A reversible knife-pleated skirt is constructed such that both sides of the skirt present a finished, pleated appearance. Typically, the material forming the knife-pleat is gathered to form at least three overlapping layers. The pleats of one side of the skirt extend vertically from the waistband to the hem of the skirt. The pleats are partially constrained from opening in the upper portions of the skirt, i.e. those portions which fit around the hip portion of the wearer, by being sewn shut from below the waistband to the hipline. The stitch lines sewing the pleats shut on the upper portion of the skirt are hidden behind each pleat and thus are not exposed to view when this side of the skirt is acting as the outer side. When the other layer of the skirt is acting as the outer side, the upper waist portion of the skirt has a flat, non-pleated appearance, and the stitching holding the pleats together from the waistband to the hipline is visible. The lower portion of the skirt, from the hipline to the hem, is pleated, since it is the reverse side of the pleats on the opposing side of the skirt.
Conventional methods of constructing reversible knife-pleated skirts involve pleating several pieces of the same patterned material and then stitching these pleated pieces together to create one pleated skirt. Generally, the seamstress or tailor constructing the pleated skirt stitches the layers of material by following the grain of the patterned fabric. Conventional methods also rely on the seamstress or tailor to estimate the termination point of the stitching, which should be near the hipline of the skirt. Thus, when reversible pleated skirts are conventionally manufactured, the stitching itself is usually not disposed along a straight line, and each line of stitching does not necessarily terminate at the same point. This method is time-consuming and imprecise, since the grain of the patterned fabric may not follow a straight line.
Often, a plaid or striped pattern is used, in which one patterned section alternates or repeats with another complementary but differently patterned section. Many of the patterned bolts of fabric are woven by hand, and the repeat of the fabric is usually not internally consistent, i.e. each patterned section will not have the identical width as the next same patterned section. Moreover, each bolt of hand-woven patterned material generally contains differences from the next bolt of the same patterned material. Since the seamstress or tailor typically pieces together several pieces of pleated material to create one skirt, inconsistencies within the material itself and between each separate pleated piece create difficulties in the construction of the final product, a reversible pleated skirt. These inconsistencies also detract from the overall appearance of the pleated skirt. Thus, conventional methods of constructing a reversible pleated skirt are not well-suited to mass production.